


easier then

by portions_forfox



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-09 01:22:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/pseuds/portions_forfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>and how does it make sense at all that it was easier back then?</p>
            </blockquote>





	easier then

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mollivanders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/gifts).



> Written for mollivanders at stainofmylove's comment ficathon. Her prompt was, _my ghost loved your ghost._

Peeta says to him, "You don't understand," and shakes his head low, slides closed the lids of his eyes like it's painful. "What it was like."  
  
And maybe Gale should feel humbled, or thoughtful, or fuck, at the very least sympathetic, but all he can think is  _No_ , a thousand fucking times no till it's a pounding in his ears, an anthem in his blood.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

As children Prim and Posy would go through phases where they'd waste away, usually in the winters when they came home from school with ice cold blood running through their veins and a black cough crouching in their throats.  _Sick_ , they'd say,  _We're just a little sick_ , because they were brave, braver than they had any right to be. Braver than was allowed when there was no food to soothe their aching bellies, and maybe the Town kids were hungry too but they'd never known the meaning of the word  _nothing_ , nothing in the cupboards, nothing in storage, nothing nothing  _nothing_.  
  
And so he and Katniss slept in the forest, that is, if sleeping and hunting are the same. Silence in the dark, silence but for the eerie singing of the looming forest, and Katniss' breath, slow, rhythmic, knelt beside him. Gale got the feeling if he reached out and touched her she'd be warm.   
  
She shot a deer that night, and they survived, all of them.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

And when Katniss was fourteen she walked home from school with him, her steps lurching and uncalculated so her body would occasionally slide into his, which was -- fine. And she wouldn't look up, wouldn't raise her eyes from the tops of her feet until they were past that particular part of the town. She didn't want to see them lined up at Cray's house, one after another, girls she knew, girls she went to school with, girls whose names and eyes she'd been familiar with since she was five. Desperate, clawing,  _starving_ , and they had nothing nothing nothing left, nothing except a warm body to sell away.  
  
"It's not fair," Katniss finally admitted one biting January morning, the wind whipping her hair into tangles round her face as she stared up at Bliss, whose thirteenth birthday they'd celebrated in class that day with a song and a pat on the back. There she stood on Cray's front steps, arms wrapped tightly around her sallow ribs as she stared blankly at the girl in front of her.  
  
"I know," was all Gale could give her, all that and an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer. Warm.  
  
There were never any Town kids in the lineup.  
  
  
And when Katniss' name was pulled from the glass, and Prim screamed and Katniss marched and the world was silent, it was Gale who had to rush into the Justice Building, Gale who was shoved into Katniss' room by relentlessly angry hands, Gale who had to feel how warm she still was, one last time, Gale who had to know that they'd survived but not by enough.  
  
  


 

-

 

 

  
 _No_ , he wants to say,  _no_  you  _don't understand_.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

"Peeta," Katniss says, and Gale can tell it's not what he expected, the wary cautionary tone of her voice is not--is not what the boy expected. He looks up at her, brown eyes wide and searching, and he finds that they are not the same.  
  
Katniss turns as though to meet his eyes, stops halfway through the motion, stares at the ground, and, and how does it make sense at all that it was easier back then?  
  
She wants to brush his arm, feel the pulse of warmth beneath the stretch of ragged skin. In love with what they used to be.


End file.
